Drucker’s Question: What Will You Do Differently on Monday?

Over the course of his long career, Peter Drucker headlined countless conferences and huddled with untold groups of executives — corporate chiefs, nonprofit leaders, and government officials who hung on his every word. But he would have been the first to question whether any of these gatherings amounted to much in the end. “One either meets or one works,” Drucker wrote — an observation that seems particularly timely following last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “One cannot do both at the same time.”

It was with this in mind, perhaps, that Drucker liked to challenge his consulting clients: “Don’t tell me you had a wonderful meeting with me. “Tell me what you’re going to do on Monday that’s different.”

The Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University, which I run, hosted a CEO Forum last October with about 30 participants from the business world, social sector, and academic community. And from the beginning, we were determined to make sure that the event reflected Drucker’s steadfast desire to turn ideas into action.

The forum — which revolved around former Procter & Gamble Chairman A.G. Lafley’s HBR piece “What Only the CEO Can Do” — generated a host of fascinating insights into four areas: shaping the values and standards of organizations; defining and interpreting “the meaningful outside”; determining which business you’re in — and which you’re not; and balancing yield in the present with investments in the future.

In an earlier blog posting, HBR’s Ellen Peebles noted the tremendous level of passion on display at the session, especially around the issue of social responsibility. For those of us at the Drucker Institute, though, the ultimate question was: Did any of the participants actually make good on Lafley’s repeated reminders to follow Drucker’s do-something-on-Monday dictum?

The short answer: Absolutely.

While we didn’t attempt to conduct a scientific survey, my colleagues and I were thrilled to discover that all four of those we contacted — Costco CEO Jim Sinegal, Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren, Teach for America CEO Wendy Kopp, and Lafley himself — had, in fact, gone out and done something different because of what they’d heard at the forum.

Lafley, for instance, was inspired by the discussion in Claremont to review P&G’s capital spending and product commercialization plans to ensure that the company was investing appropriately in its mid- and long-term growth. In addition, he committed to monthly talent reviews to make certain that P&G is developing the leaders it needs for the future.

Meanwhile, Sinegal drew on the forum’s exploration of corporate values to think through a pay raise for the bulk of his company’s frontline workers. “Because of the downturn, our employees are having a tough time,” he says. “They deserve a pay increase. Even though it would be painful as a retail business at this moment to approve one, the unfair thing would be not to give them an increase.”

As Sinegal explains it, most of the conversation he had on the matter with Costco’s executive committee revolved around the size of the boost. “At one point, a person in the meeting stopped and said, ‘That says something about our culture right there. All our attention is not on the question of whether to approve an increase, but on how big it should be.'”

Kopp, for her part, also zeroed in on culture. Inspired by a McKinsey & Co. program described at the forum by the firm’s former managing director, Rajat Gupta, Teach for America has now embarked on a formal effort to convert its core values into practice among a new generation of managers. Says Kopp: “We are engaging our whole organization in reflecting on what about our current values is most crucial to succeeding in our long-term plan; what the unintended consequences of our values might be; and what other core principles might be missing that might be important.”

As for Lundgren, he came out of the forum focused more than ever on Macy’s customers. “I need to shift my time and attention to really put a significant amount of my energy and words and visibility behind becoming the ‘chief customer officer’ of the company,” he says. “Whatever we’ve done in providing customer service has been adequate, but not differentiating. We need customer service to be our differentiator.” In recent weeks, Lundgren has visited Macy’s stores in more than two dozen cities to spread this new customer-is-king gospel.

So, how about you? What’s the best idea that you ever took away from a conference or symposium that you actually acted upon? What’s your Monday moment?